


A Very Unusual Otter

by blythechild



Series: The Otter One [2]
Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awkwardness, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Fluff, Friendship/Love, Fur, Grooming, Meet-Cute, Misunderstandings, Orphans, Otters, Silly, We Just Love Each Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 12:48:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8752039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythechild/pseuds/blythechild
Summary: Emily decides to introduce herself to the weird otter that lives on the other side of the bay: Skinny Spencer.This is a work of fanfiction and as such I do not claim ownership over the characters herein. It was created as a personal amusement. This story is suitable for readers 14 and older.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Deejaymil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/gifts).



> For Deejaymil and possibly the two other readers who thought continuing an otter AU was a great idea ;) This is just so, so silly...
> 
> And as an ottery fyi: otters congregate in groups called "rafts", just in case that wasn't clear.

Aquatic life was where it’s at. Water made everything fantastic, and if one ever needed proof of that you only had to watch an otter swim. They were graceful and amazing. Much less so on land, which is why they never spent much time there. It was this obvious otter fact to which Emily attributed the awkwardness of her first meeting with Skinny Spencer. Anything else would’ve launched her into musings of how fundamentally _weird_ he was instead. ‘Awkward’ was simply safer to assume.

He was on a rock when she found him, golden streaked fur glinting in the sunlight as he squinted very hard at what looked to be a starfish.

“Hello,” she chirped, bobbing in the water just below the rock.

Spencer yelped as if his tail were caught in something, and then he stumbled, dropped the starfish, fell over his own paws and tumbled backwards off the rock disappearing into the water with an ungainly splash. Emily just blinked, stunned as the moment left her floating in his disruptive wake and bubbles.

“Huh,” she mumbled to herself after a minute spent trying to figure all of that out. _Not promising._

Also, he hadn’t resurfaced. She twirled herself and then dove beneath the waves to check. She found him a few yards away, half-hidden by a rock, blinking at her through some kelp. She blinked back, circling her paws slowly to keep her submerged, and then she raised one furry eyebrow at him. He cautiously extracted himself from the kelp and rose to the surface, floating with his head just above the water. She rose too, staring at him the whole time, which probably did nothing to ease the strangeness of the encounter.

“Hi,” she tried again and then waved a paw at him. “I’m Emily.”

“Yes, I know,” he blurted quickly and then blinked hard and tried to wave back. “Umm, hello, hi…”

“You’re Spencer,” she encouraged when it seemed clear that he wasn’t going to say anything else.

“Yes, hi, sorry… I’m Spencer. Sorry,” he ended miserably, and Emily started to wonder if she was _that_ intimidating. 

“Are you… are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he murmured against the water surface making an excited burst of bubbles happen. “I was thinking. Sometimes I do that too hard and I forget where I am.” He looked away shyly. “I shouldn’t do that on land - I know better. It’s not safe…”

Not safe? What an odd thing to say. She was starting to feel silly about being jealous of all the awesomeness Derek had told her about him because, really, he was just one odd otter.

“Well… sorry if I frightened you. You’re friends with my pal Derek and he said I ought to introduce myself. So I swam over to do that…” Now _she_ was feeling awkward. Was it contagious?

“And I fell off a rock,” Spencer finished. Emily laughed and then, miraculously, Spencer smiled back, trying to hide it below the water’s surface.

“Yeah, you did. But it was spectacular - never seen anything like it,” she smirked and then immediately regretted it when his smile disappeared and his wariness returned. She rushed to fill the gap because she didn’t like his caution at all; his smile was much better. “So, uh, what were you thinking so hard about anyway?”

“The starfish.” He floated a little closer but still kept far enough away to escape if it was called for. She wondered why he was so twitchy. “I was trying to determine if it was the right one.”

“The right one?”

“The right species.” He rose up out of the water so that his front paws were above the surface. He perked up a little at her curiosity. “Apparently there is a species of starfish that at a certain point in its life cycle reverts back to its nascent state and then _grows up_ again.”

She blinked. How did anyone know this stuff? “So, it’s… immortal?”

He brightened at her question and inched a little closer. “Sort of. I mean, they can still die of disease or injury… they _can_ die but they don’t have to if they play their cards right.”

“That sounds like a story. How do you know that?”

He frowned and twirled away from her a little again. She felt weird about it, like she was playing out some role in his mind that she didn’t understand. She wondered if someone had hurt him - he didn’t have a raft to protect him. Maybe _a lot_ of someones had hurt him. She didn’t like that idea.

“I don’t know it for sure, that’s why I was searching for it. To find proof. That’s how science works.”

“Science?”

“Yeah. It’s what the biologists talk about constantly. It explains stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Everything. It explains everything and creates everything.”

She crossed her paws in front of her doubtfully. “Water creates everything.”

Spencer floated a little closer and gave her half a fangy smile that did something strange to her brain - like she’d dived too deep and held her breath too long. “Sure, but…” he raised a paw. “What creates the water?”

Oh man. She didn’t have an answer for that, and Emily liked to think of herself as a smart, sensible otter. Then she wondered, _does HE know what creates the water?_ Her stomach fluttered gently and then she cursed Derek for knowing her as well as he did: she liked smart males.

“Well, that’s gonna bake my brain for a while,” she shook her head and ignored the sudden concerned look he gave her. “How do you know what the biologists talk about?”

“I, uh, I grew up at the Institute. I listened to them all the time. It was pretty boring there - they were the only thing that was different.”

“The Institute for Marine Study?” She didn’t think things that went there ever came back.

“Yeah,” he looked ashamed. “My mother had two pups at once and she couldn’t feed us both. The biologists at the Institute took me and raised me, otherwise I probably would’ve starved to death.”

“Oh… I’m so sorry.” She’d heard of orphaned pups but she’d never met one before.

“I don’t remember her,” he shrugged. “It’s fine. They released me into the bay when I reached adulthood and could take care of myself.”

He didn’t really seem like he was all that good at it. He was skinny and nervous, and covered in kelp. And it was quite possible that he only had Derek, an angry sea lion, and a limping seagull as friends. Running around with that kind of track record, it wouldn’t surprise her at all if he got beaten up often.

“So that’s why you’re on your own. There’s a rumor about you that you were ostracized by your raft…”

“Nope,” he shook his head. She realized that his long hair extended up to the top of his head as well where it curled ridiculously. He really was unusual. “I’ve never belonged to one.” 

That made her terribly sad. She spent most of her time alone but she still depended on the security of her raft and her friends. Her life would be so dull without Derek and Penelope and Jennifer, and all of the others… It didn’t seem right. Everyone should have somebody.

“Well, umm, was it the right one?” She tried to stop feeling such things for an otter she’d just met.

“Right one what?” he blinked in confusion.

“The starfish.”

“Oh. I dunno.” He looked crestfallen. “I dropped it.”

“Shall we look for it then?” Emily wiggled a little closer clasping her paws together in what she was emphatically _not_ labeling as excited curiosity, because she wasn’t sure she believed any of this ‘science’ business to begin with but wouldn’t it be something if it actually existed? “You can tell me what it’s supposed to look like. It’ll be easier to find it with two sets of eyes than one.”

“You’d… you’d want to do that?” He looked stunned, which seemed to be his go-to expression, but for the first time in this conversation he also appeared delighted.

“Yeah. Why not?” she shrugged with a practiced ‘I-could-take-it-or-leave-it’ smirk. “I’m not sure I buy this zombie crustacean malarkey but I didn’t have any other plans for this afternoon other than sunning myself. And that gets ollllld after a while…” 

“Okay…” Spencer grinned broadly showing off all of his fangs. She didn’t think she’d ever seen an otter so happy at the prospect of essentially hunting for food. “Okay, so… where did I fall off the rock? That’s where we’ll start.”

She grinned back and pointed to his acrobatic exit point with her paw, and then they both swam towards it together.

“Did you know,” he began, wiggling his tail too quickly and making his swimming all zig-zaggy with excitement. “That starfish aren’t actually fish? They don’t have gills, and they don’t have blood. They don’t even swim - they _walk_ everywhere!”

She spent the rest of the afternoon searching and being peppered with bizarre ‘science’ facts that Spencer knew. The only time he stopped talking was when they were underwater, and though she thought that would be draining or boring, or both, the afternoon passed too quickly and she was reluctant to leave when the sun began to set. They never found the starfish. She was secretly delighted by that because it meant that she could suggest they meet up again the following day, a suggestion to which Spencer agreed wholeheartedly.

\----

“…and _that’s_ how Gerald got the lazy eye.” Emily stretched out on the warm rock, stomach facing the sun and eyes closed in contentment. It was warm and breezy - another great damned day to be an otter. She felt Spencer wiggle next to her.

“No _way_ ,” he whispered in awe.

“Way,” she smiled. “I don’t know what the drooling’s about though.”

Some days were designed for sun worshipping. While Spencer found it hard to stay still, she managed to convince him from time to time that laying out on a warm rock was an excellent use of otter time. Today was such a day, aided by a healthy dose of Emily’s notorious storytelling. Spencer said he loved it when she told him things, which seemed ironic considering how much of their friendship was taken up by his dissertations on just about _everything_.

“Excessive salivating could be a symptom of any number of things. Anything from a deformation of the glands to mating arousal,” he mused. She peeked an eye open at him.

“You think he drools because he’s horny? He drools at everyone…”

“I don’t know Gerald,” he qualified and then followed her example and closed his eyes, belly to the sun. “Perhaps he has a tremendous appetite.”

His fur seemed more golden than usual and the slight breeze fluttered its long tendrils as they dried into lazy curls. And he was _littered_ with kelp. She really wanted to clean him but… well, they weren’t like that. She found it more and more frustrating and didn’t know if that was because she had an obsessive need to groom, or something else.

“Hmmm, for a moment there I thought you were suggesting that Gerald wanted to mate with me…”

Spencer’s eyes flicked open in alarm. He turned to look at her and quickly reiterated, “I don’t know Gerald.” _Well, that’s something,_ she thought.

“S’okay,” she smirked and closed her eyes again. “I’m not interested in mating.”

“Oh,” Spencer murmured, and to her he sounded a little disappointed. “Well then he can keep on drooling, I guess. If that’s what it’s about in the first place.”

“Yes, he can,” she smiled and thought _you can too, until you figure out what you’re doing._ Honestly, for such a smart otter, Spencer could be a bit thick.

A shadow fell over her slicing the afternoon heat in half and before she could open her eyes to see what was up, she heard a threatening growl.

“What’s all this then?”

Emily looked up into the dripping, whiskery anger of a displaced sea lion. _Oh shit._

“Rossi…” Spencer leapt up in a flash of fur and tugged him by his flipper. “This is Emily.”

“I know who the Lady Otter is, Spencer. It doesn’t mean she’s welcome on my rock.” He thumped forward as if he were going to trample right over her and she scrambled up and slid off the rock into the water quicker than spit. He barked at her from the edge of his perch, “Off! Off! Off!”

“Rossi!” Spencer whacked him with a kick of his back paw. “RUDE!”

“Listen, kid, just because you’re entranced by her fur and her beady little otter-iness doesn’t mean that she can help herself to my rock.”

“I’m not ‘entranced’…” Spencer looked guiltily to Emily bobbing on the tide and then quickly away.

“Oh yes you are,” Rossi flapped his flippers around and wiggled his whiskers in a way that he probably thought was feminine and fetching. “ _‘She’s got such pretty, dark fur… she’s such an excellent diver, Rossi… she’s so smart - she asks all kinds of interesting questions’_ You are all caught up in this female’s mess, Spence. Why don’t you two just mate and get it over with?”

“Rossi, _shut up!_ ” Spencer looked like he was about to fall off another rock.

“There’s nothing special about mating, kid. Seriously, you just do it and move on. No big deal - I’ve done it dozens of times.”

“But you’re still surprisingly unattached,” Emily mumbled. Rossi glared and leaned his whiskery snout above her over the water.

“Maybe I should call you _Mouthy_ Lady Otter…”

She twirled her tail so that she could arch herself up out of the water a little. “Call me whatever you like, Fish Breath.” _Not gonna intimidate this otter, no siree…_

Rossi actually cracked a smile for a split second, and then Spencer thumped him again. “Ow!”

“She’s my _friend_ , Rossi!”

“And you’re mine, kid. I’m just lookin’ out for you. You can do what you like elsewhere but there will be NO Lady Otters on my rock. That’s final.” Rossi slapped a flipper down and made a fat splat sound to emphasize his point. “Females are fine for mating, but not much else. You’ll see, kid… eventually, all of them leave. This rock is a male oasis, and that’s the way it’s gonna stay.”

Spencer’s expression crumbled and Emily’s heart stuttered to see it. She’d been kind of enjoying this little fracas, but now she got a nervous feeling in the pit of her stomach. Spencer slouched, lowering his paws and turning away from his friend. “I wanted you to know her because you’re both important to me. I-I didn’t think you’d make me choose…”

Spencer slid off the rock and landed next to Emily with a despondent splash. Rossi’s expression suddenly lost its smugness and his considerable eyebrows tented with concern.

“Hey, kid, c’mon... don’t be like that. I just didn’t-”

“Let’s go,” Spencer turned and muttered to Emily. Her chest got painfully tight.

“Spencer-”

He dived under and she saw ripples from where he twisted and fluttered out into the bay at incredible speed. If she didn’t follow soon it would take her forever to catch up. She turned back and glared at Rossi.

“I hope you’re satisfied.”

“I’m not,” he said quietly, with a kind of stunned sadness about him. “I… tell him I’m sorry.”

She arched back and under the water, wiggling as fast as she could to catch up to the diminishing slipstream of Spencer’s retreat. _Tell him yourself,_ she thought.

\----

She’d been late getting away to meet him and when she swam to the mouth of the inlet, she found him not exploring the tide break or the shoals as he usually did, but floating quietly staring out into the open water instead.

“Hey,” she sputtered with a hurried grin. “Sorry I’m late. The raft had a touch of drama this morning. Eloise’s been letting some new male sniff around her and it’s not mating season, so… yeah, there was a kerfuffle about propriety an’ raft rules an’ other nonsense.”

She chuckled because this sort of thing was ridiculous but he seemed to be fascinated by raft dynamics. When she looked up however, he was still staring out to sea with just a small curl to his whiskers to indicate that he’d heard her at all. She got worried really quickly. He was still pouting about his fight with Rossi, even though they’d made up about it a week later. And she’d tried to make time for him to go visit so that they could continue their bromance…

“So, what do you feel like doing today?” she chirped a little too nervously. It was disturbing not to see him bouncing out of his fur, twitching his whiskers, and assailing her with ‘did you know…’ salvos. He just shrugged.

“Whatever you want.”

“Well, we could look for that squid you’ve been talking about. Or we could find mollusks for Penelope. She’s having quite the time with her pups right now… Or we could race to the midpoint of the bay and back again? I’m determined that I’m gonna beat you one of these days…” she smiled hopefully.

“Yep,” he mumbled, still bobbing on the tide and staring.

“Hey, Spencer, what’s going on in that otter-y brain of yours right now? Talk to me.” 

He shook his head making his tangled curls bounce. “Nothing. Sorry. Let’s find mollusks for Penny.”

“Spencer,” she grabbed him before he could swim away. They almost never touched, which was strange enough for otters, but now that they were she felt weirdly energetic all over. Her tail wiggled a little too aggressively making her bump against him as they bobbed together. He stared at her and there was a touch of the apprehension that she’d seen in him when they first met. Then she took in the rest of him and realized how tangled he was. He had to wrap himself in kelp at night to keep from floating away on the tide while he slept. He didn’t have a choice because he had no raft to protect him. That thought made her indescribably sad and then she shoved it away when she thought there was something she could do to help. Emily didn’t like giving time over to sadness - it seemed like such a waste. Being helpful on the other hand, well, being helpful was _helpful_ , wasn’t it? Given the kelp thing and his long fur, he was usually a wreck, but she had this remarkable grooming obsession… Maybe all his doldrums needed was a little housekeeping.

“C’mere,” she murmured and then pulled him closer, reaching out and nipping a strand of kelp from his chest with her teeth. She gently tugged it free and dropped it into the water as she heard him gasp beside her. “Yer a mess.”

He didn’t say anything and didn’t try to wriggle free, so she just kept going. Leaning in again she tugged at the hair where the kelp had been. It was knotted so she had to lick and then softly nibble the whorl until the hair loosened enough to straighten. It took a few tries and then once it was untangled she licked it out over and over to lie flat along his chest. When her tongue pressed against him she could feel his heart thudding rapidly back at her. She looked up when she was done and his eyes were huge, riveted to her, furry eyebrows almost levitating off his face. It had been a long time since she’d groomed anyone, let alone anyone she _liked_. Her heart was making quite a racket as well and as the tide pushed them together she knew he wouldn’t miss that telltale tattoo. Their tails brushed as they both twirled to offset the motion of the water around them.

“This could take a while,” her voice much softer than she intended. “Do you mind?”

He blinked, shaking his head ‘no’, and then growling in a strange way as he struggled to answer her. “T-take your t-time.” His paw hooked around hers and pulled her closer. And then her heart accelerated so quickly that her whole body had to move to contain it. She curled around him and up so she could nip his ear playfully.

“Okay,” she whispered and then began nibbling at the impressive knot along his neck scruff. 

He didn’t even try to hide his moan then, and went completely lax against her. She smiled and set herself to her task, discovering that she was purring as she progressed. They swirled gently in each other’s grip while she worked. The sun rose high into the midsummer sky; it took hours and neither one of them seemed to care. He was quiet for the longest time, so much so that she thought he might be dozing, and then he shocked her a little when he suddenly spoke as if continuing a conversation.

“I was thinking… I was lonely.” He was floating on his side as she attacked the crazy knots along his back. She used her paws to roll him back towards her slightly.

“Lonely?” _How could he be lonely? We see each other every day…_

“Yeah.” He splashed the water aimlessly with a paw. “Because of the Rossi thing.”

“But he apologized.”

“I know. But it made me realize how few friends I have. If he’d forced me to choose-”

“Then he wouldn’t have been much of a friend, would he?” she interrupted and forced him to look at her. She gave him a furry frown. “I would’ve been forced to cash in all of my seagull favors in order to get that precious rock of his covered in shit.”

“Emily,” his eyes went wide.

“That’s what you get when you mess with one of _my_ friends,” she shrugged unapologetically before she began to nip again at the knot on his back. “But he came to his senses and we’re all good now. No need for the guano firebombing.”

He started vibrating, making little ripples in the water around them. When she rolled him over to look at his face again, he was laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

He peered up at her, golden hair twirling in the water around him and smiling in a way that made feel soft all over and a little unsure of herself. “He was right about you: you’re one mouthy otter.”

She splashed him, and bared her fangs for show. “Shut up. Roll over.”

“See?” he chuckled, and she made sure he got a mouthful of water for his trouble. She went back to nipping at his fur while he giggled and sputtered at random intervals.

\----

Rossi’s shadow fell over them as they sunned themselves in the water just below his rock. Their front paws were hooked together as they dozed, sun making them lazy and contented even as the water cooled them. Emily didn’t open her eyes.

“Fish Breath,” she murmured.

“Mouthy Otter,” he responded.

“She’s not on your rock,” Spencer mumbled in a sleepy way. “Just behave yourself.”

“ _She’s_ not allowed on the rock. That doesn’t mean _you_ can’t be,” he growled a little petulantly.

“I’m here. That’s all that should matter. I’m spending time with my two friends.”

Rossi muttered and it sounded a little hurt. Emily cracked an eyelid and saw that, yeah, the sea lion was a little put out.

“C’mon, Rossi,” Spencer said smugly and when she looked over at him, he wore a wide smile with his eyes closed. His paw tightened where it hooked around hers. “She groomed me. I owe her one.”

Emily heard Rossi huff, and then the sound of his flippers slapping as he moved back up the rock, settling with a wallop.

“You _do_ look better,” he grumbled.

Emily grinned.

\----

She swam out to his hideout at the mouth of the inlet and when he saw her, he leapt off the rock he was perched on and zipped over to meet her with frightening speed. Spencer grinned like a maniac in greeting, splashing and circling around her until she was dizzy and giggling.

“Hey, hi, hello…” He slipped around her and then carefully nipped her ear before retreating shyly. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” she said breathlessly, wishing that he’d do more than just nip. Damn her biological imperative. Well, ‘biological imperative’ was Spencer’s term. She just called it being a randy otter. Summer was turning to fall and the fall was, well, _go time_ in otter land.

“What do you want to do today?” He swam around her in a tight circle making her turn in his wake. His paws and tail brushed hers randomly. He’d gotten a lot more touchy in the weeks since he’d first allowed her to groom him.

“I can’t stay long.”

His happiness popped like a bubble.

“The raft is having a meeting soon. Mating season is coming up and we have to go over the rules about visiting males and stuff. They act they’re being all progressive and shit - taking minutes and passing motions,” she rolled her eyes. “But when it comes down to it, it’s just a perverted little orgy. Every year it’s the same thing. I don’t know why we bother with the meeting.”

She smiled at him and then saw that he’d stopped circling and was staring at his reflection in the rippled surface instead.

“Hey… hey, why so glum, chum?” She nosed his chest to get his attention. When he looked up at her, he seemed devastated. Her heart rocketed around uncomfortably in her. “Spencer, _what?_ ”

“Mating season.” He swallowed hard. “Maybe we should… postpone seeing each other until that’s over.”

“Why?” Anger made her paws twitch. Was he going to roam the nearby rafts looking for females? “Worried I’ll cramp your style with other females?”

His eyes went wide, almost showing white at the edges. “No! I’m n-not… why would I do that?”

“Biological imperative,” she shrugged and tried to hide her panic under her ‘I-don’t-care-about-anything’ expression.

“No.” He slapped his tail in the water. “I just thought that y-you… listen, I don’t want to be around while you mate, okay?” He crossed his front paws over his chest as he curled away from her. “Don’t ask me to do that.”

“You think _I’m_ going to roam for a random male??” She barked out a loud laugh that made him jump. “You’ve got to be joking.”

“Well then, why go to the meeting?” He looked seriously confused.

“Raft rules,” she said like it was obvious. Except he didn’t have a raft. He didn’t know how a community worked. “Spencer, I haven’t participated in seasonal antics in… jeez, well, an uncomfortably long time. Let’s put it that way.”

“Oh,” he bobbed sullenly.

“I don’t want a mate.”

“I see.”

“Well, uh, what I mean is I _do_ want a mate, but not one that’s just a slam-bam-thank-you-otter sorta set up where I’m left with a pup to feed and he leaves with a big ol’ grin on his whiskers.”

He looked at her sideways. “I don’t really understand that.”

 _Of course he doesn’t._ “You understand temporary pair bonding, right? You were the one who told _me_ about it.”

He nodded.

“Well, that’s all mating season is. There are some cases where the bond proves permanent, like Derek and Penelope, but many of the females in this inlet are raising their pups alone. Most of them are fine with it, but I wouldn’t be.”

“Oh.” _Oh? OH?? Fuck, Spencer, how can you be this dim? Dammit, Derek, you said he was smart…_

She sighed and made the water between them ripple, and then she floated closer. “I want a mate, Spencer, and pups maybe. Someday. But it has to be the right male. A kind of otter who’s more than just his instincts.” She nudged his paws until he dropped them, and then she squirmed closer and licked a whorl of fur on his chest. “One who’s funny and smart, and maybe just a little bit weird, because that’s the way I am.”

He was doing his blinking thing again, just looking down at her curling around his chest like he wasn’t sure it was actually happening.

“I always thought the males around here were so boring, Spence. But you’re not boring. I can’t wait to see you every day, and you surprise me all the time with the things you do and the stuff you think about… And maybe I’m not all that interesting in comparison, but… if someone like you were to ask me-”

“Bemymateplease,” he practically squeaked in one hurried breath.

She grinned, all fangy and thrilled, rising up in the water, ears attentive. “Really?”

“Yes, please,” he whispered and nodded earnestly, then he added another breathy ‘please’ for good measure.

She bowled him over and pushed him underwater with a hoot. They twirled around each other, wearing bubbly grins, and Emily curled up his body through the golden fur that felt like silk in water, and nipped his ears possessively. They popped to the surface again, splashing and rolling each other over, pressing their faces together until their whiskers tickled and gripping one another until their paws left marks. She giggled against him and he wrapped around her like it was going to be his new state of being. _Oh God,_ she thought, _Derek was right. There’ll be no living with him after this…_

“Are you going to the meeting?” Spencer said a while later after plenty of splashing and chasing, and a bout of belly licking that got her all distracted and tingly everywhere.

“I think I’ll skip it this year,” she winked at him, and then began to lick his belly, which produced the most satisfied otter grunt she’d ever heard in her life. And the tingling came back with a vengeance. “I’ve got other things to attend to.”

Like making a new raft with a skinny, weird, longhaired otter.

\----

The sun was great even if the wind was still cold. Her coat was thick, the rock was warm, and Emily was as content as an otter could possibly be on a Tuesday afternoon in early spring. She heard wet slapping approach her but she didn’t open her eyes. A shadow fell across her face.

“Lady Otter,” Rossi muttered.

“Fish Breath,” she greeted in return.

“Where’s Spencer?”

“Off hunting,” she yawned, stretching her paws and then relaxing them with a sigh. “It’s harder for me to dive these days. Too buoyant.”

“Yeah, well, you _are_ getting big…”

She cracked open an eyelid and shot him a look. He grinned at her devilishly, all whiskers and furry eyebrows. _Smartass,_ she thought as loudly as she could. Just then there was an excited eruption of sea lion barking.

“What’s this?”

“Rossi! What in the name of holy fuck?”

“Maybe he brought us a snack, fellas…”

“Quit it!” Rossi bellowed so forcefully that Emily felt it reverberate through the rock beneath her. “Can’t you see the lady is _sleeping???_ Fuck off, all of you!... Larry, so help me god, if you make me go over there you’ll regret it…”

“Disgraceful!” barked one lion.

“What a wuss…” barked another.

Rossi just growled darkly. The sea lion grumblings about him going soft continued but no one made good on their threat to eat her. She looked up at him.

“Thank you, Rossi.”

“I got yer back, Mouthy.” His expression was stony but then he dropped her a quick wink. If she blinked, she would’ve missed it.

There was a tiny splash and then a fish fell down next to her on the rock. She looked up and saw Spencer, dripping and curious.

“What was that about?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“The boys wanted to eat your female,” Rossi said in a bored way. “I told them she was bitter and fat. Not worth the trouble.”

“Hey! I’m _pregnant_ , not fat!”

“Whatever,” Rossi muttered.

Spencer grinned, unperturbed by her near-death experience, and shook himself, sprinkling her liberally with icy water. She growled and tried to swat him but he ducked, still grinning like a fiend, and then snuggled up along her round belly until he could nip her neck.

“Hi,” he nuzzled against her whiskers. She did her best to wiggle him off but he was a determined snuggler. And she wasn’t trying all that hard.

“You’re all wet.”

“You’re an observant otter,” he bit her ear cheekily and she melted a little. _Damn him._ “How are you and the squirt doing this afternoon?” His paw patted her tummy gently.

“Pretty well. We’re a bit damper than we’d like to be at the moment though.” She gave him a smirk and then licked a curly strand of gold across his chest. He looked at her intently and then made a low growl that set her tingling despite being wet and squashed.

“Hey,” Rossi barked. “No canoodling on the rock.”

Emily rolled her eyes. “No wonder why you’re still single, Fish Breath.”

“Why don’t you take that?” Spencer said to Rossi nodding at the fish he’d caught.

“Really?”

“Sure. I can always catch another.” He smiled oh-so-innocently, but Emily knew what he was up to.

“Devious little mammal,” she cooed in his ear when Rossi pounced on the free meal.

Spencer flashed her a fangy grin and then nibbled at her neck scruff as she tried to keep her purring to herself. “Distraction is a common survival technique employed when one is faced with a predator of superior size or strength.”

“This isn’t survival…” she breathed unsteadily.

“Sure it is.” He nibbled his way down to her belly, licking at dark whorls of her fur as he went. “Perpetuation of the species.”

“Jeez, Spence…” she gasped and then heard Rossi shuffle closer to them.

“What did I _just say?_ NO CANOODLING.”

“It’s grooming,” Spencer lied.

“Then no canoodling or grooming.”

“Eat your fish,” Emily huffed.

“Tastes weird. Like… otter deception.”

Spencer was licking her belly with the kind of fastidious intensity that traditionally led to all sorts of otter antics, and the pup started wiggling, and Emily gave herself over to the tingling, buzzing overstimulation with a long ‘woooooo’ sound.

“Guys, I’m warning you, if you two start humping right here I’ll throw you both into the ocean!” Rossi slapped a flipper down. “Fucking kinky otter perverts…”

Spencer popped up from Emily’s belly and then rushed Rossi faster than she thought possible. He wore a furious expression and his ears where twitching dangerously.

“If you toss my love and my pup into the sea, Rossi, I’ll bite you into so many miniscule pieces that sharks won’t be able to tell what you once were.” He was growling, his fur bristling, and Emily had a moment of unrestrained femaleness at the sight of him. _Silly, skinny, brave little otter…_

Rossi’s eyebrows rose, truly shocked, and then he raised a flipper and shuffled back a step. “I was just joking, kid. Honest. I learned my lesson the last time: the Lady Otter is here to stay.”

“Yes, she is,” Spencer grumbled, and then turned back to look at Emily. When he did, his hackles fell and his whole body seemed to relax into a long, sinuous curve. “I knew it the moment she came looking for me, even after I’d made a complete idiot of myself, instead of swimming away.”

Another hopeless wave of femaleness overcame her and she rolled up onto her paws in an attempt to cover how much she wanted to pounce on his romantic ass. Despite how much fun it was to annoy Rossi, she really had no intention of humping in front of him. But she definitely had _intentions_ that needed seeing to a.s.a.p. She slid up to Spencer as gracefully as she could while being on land and toting around a bellyful of pup.

“Well, that’s because your idiocy was truly amazing to behold,” she murmured and then nipped his ear while he sighed loudly. “I was curious to see if it could get any more catastrophic.”

She giggled and felt him smile when his whiskers against her neck twitched. Then she whispered, “We should go somewhere else. I feel an epic canoodle coming on.” His whiskers twitched again, and then once more like a half-stutter and she knew she had him. She laughed darkly in his ear.

“Guys, I’m serious,” Rossi grumbled, sounding a little desperate now. “You’re tainting my rock with your weird ottery sex stuff. Please go away and… _fornicate_ it out of your systems.”

“Alright, alright… we’re going,” Spencer grinned into her neck and nudged her gently to the rock’s edge. “ _Fornicating_ is less interesting on land anyway. Nice word, by the way, Rossi…”

Rossi puffed out his chest a little at the praise as both Emily and Spencer slid into the water with soft plops. 

“You should try it,” Emily twirled and shot Rossi a cheeky smile. “Humping in water, I mean…”

“You’re a mouthy, dirty, little creature,” Rossi mock-scolded, trying to hide a grin in his whiskers. “I knew you’d be his downfall from the start.”

Emily rose up in the water, arching towards his hulking shape. “And you are a magnificent beast, Fish Breath.”

“Go away, silly otters,” Rossi smiled. “And don’t come back until I’ve had a chance to disinfect the rock.”

She heard Spencer laugh but then she dived under the water and swam as fast as she could manage knowing that it would compel him to chase her. She had a growing soft spot for Rossi but she really just wanted to get up in Spencer’s business as soon as otterly possible. He caught up with her quickly, a flash of soft gold that swirled around her as they sped together through the inlet. He nipped and nudged and tickled her with explosions of bubbles until she was so delighted she had to break the surface to laugh aloud. Spencer curled up her body in a flash, grinning the shy fangy grin that _did things_ to her, and she grabbed him back, happy just to twirl with him as they bobbed on the tide. Yep, water was definitely where it was at, especially when the sun was shining, and your fur was clean, and you were hopelessly tangled around your favorite otter.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I messed up the starfish thing. There is no species of starfish that is immortal. I got it mixed up with _Turritopsis dohrnii_ which is an immortal jellyfish. By the time I realized my mistake, I couldn't figure out how to make a west coast sea otter come into contact with a jellyfish, and then I felt stupid about worrying over it so much. I'm doing this for free, folks... sometimes the fact checker just glitches.
> 
> And in case anyone is interested, otters DO hold hands. [Here's visual proof.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epUk3T2Kfno) It's ridiculously adorable.


End file.
